Monday, February 3, 2014

In
this piece, Croteau argues that media and ideology play a key part in our
perceptions and expectations of our everyday lives. He first explains his point
by defining the role of ideology in the life of a society, in essence saying
that ideology is a human experience of human expectations. When media expresses
(varying and often contradictory) ideological themes and tropes, often times
what is concerning to viewers and critics of media is which ideological
messages are being broadcasted and what affects this has upon the consumers of
media. After reading this piece, I have come to understand this as a reciprocal
relationship between people in a society - who arguably have a culture - and
the media - who is thus influenced by the cultural expectations of said
society. What then becomes interesting is, like the cycle of Darwinian Theory
of evolution, new messages of what can be acceptable are mixed in with dominant
messages. Those who have the power in society - those who are valued in some
form or another - define what power is. While Croteau argues also that as long
as the "correct" message - i.e. the messages of the marketing teams
and producers of media - are being displayed and consumed - and therefore
employed by the consumers who absorb them, there is no critique to the dominant
ideology. Critique thus comes when there is a fissure between "real
life" and what our culture/media expresses to us. Therefore
the more a message is given what I refer to as “airtime” the more this
ideological message becomes a consumed and perceived reality for those at whom
it is aimed. It is because of this reason that media, like culture and power,
are constantly changing in its approach to find a type of balance with the
society as a whole. Media consumption and production is a cycle that relies
upon both a society that consumes and a source for consumption – you cannot
have one without the other. In this way, we can look at the ways in which media
and ideology create a cycle of destruction – the breaking down of “real life”
images – and reconstruction – the repeated stereotypical images and tropes we
understand and fall back onto that take different shape and/or change very
slowly. Like a phoenix rising, media is a cycle of destruction which gives life
to creation of human expectations.